When we posted a call for papers for a special issue on “Learning from the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis,” we did not expect that the crisis would still be underway at the time of publication. It may be arguable whether the original crisis persists, or whether it has evolved into something different: a “double dip recession,” a slow-motion crisis of economic stagnation, a U.S. national debt crisis, a crisis precipitated by claims about the implications of that debt, a global crisis driven by European debt, or some combination of the above. The lack of definitional clarity is one indicator of the problem’s complexity and intractability.

Complexity and intractability are conjoined with consequentiality in this prolonged historical moment. There have been economic consequences for financial institutions and businesses at all levels from local to global, and for macroeconomic measures such as employment and productivity. Much more concretely, there have been deeply painful consequences for the people behind those measures, manifesting as unemployment, underemployment, home foreclosures, lack or loss of health insurance, and a general but acute sense of uncertainty and diminished prospects. There have been political consequences as well, demonstrated in the rise of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements in the United States, violent street clashes in Europe, and historic political gridlock around proposed solutions. The very legitimacy of institutions, public and private, is under new scrutiny.

A lack of clarity also surrounds the question of what, if anything, has been learned from the financial crisis. There have been investigations and reports, attempts to stabilize and regulate critical institutions, and resistance to and reversals of some of those attempts. Many of the previous patterns persist, and if there has been learning it has not led to renewed stability or confidence. A more focused question motivates this special issue: what has been learned about processes of organizational, institutional, and political communication by scholars studying the roots of and responses to the global financial crisis? Studies of this crisis can have immediate practical value in informing efforts to move forward productively, and broader theoretical value in assessing how the discursive and the material are entangled in the economic domain.

Three essays in this issue examine those entanglements. Two of the essays exemplify a recent (re)turn to critical studies of economic rhetoric that has emerged, surely not accidently, as the economic crisis has unfolded. The third essay approaches the topic from the perspective of advertising and public relations, providing quantitative analysis of a particular rhetorical genre. All three essays, of course, examine the state of affairs at the time they were written and revised. Our initial call for papers suggested that “the legacies of this crisis may persist and evolve for years to come,” and that statement is as true today as it was when we first made it.

Joshua Hanan’s “A Tale of Two Streets: (Re)presenting Economic Value during the Creation and Passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” revisits the early stages of the crisis, when the “Wall Street/Main Street” trope articulated a new sense of systemic financial connection across institutional and geographic spaces. Hanan examines questions of rhetorical agency, arguing that discourse and materiality, too, were interconnected in the “rhetoric of the Streets.” In his analysis, those connections are themselves articulated rhetorically, in a range of distinctive ways exemplified by six influential public figures. Hanan’s analysis may be more timely now than ever, as the Occupy Wall Street movement begins to articulate its own rhetorical vision.

Stephen Rahko’s essay, “Negotiating Economic Judgment in Late Modernity: Knowledge, Action, and the Global Financial Crisis” addresses the first policy efforts made in the United States to cope with the growing crisis. Rahko argues that the choices made by the Bush administration were grounded in an attenuated vision of what was possible or prudent, itself grounded in an attenuated vision of rhetoric. Contrasting F. A. Hayek’s constrained view of rhetoric, which strongly informs U. S. economic conservatism, with the more expansive view of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, he concludes that a vision more in line with the latter could have led to more effective and sustainable policy actions. Although the actions of the Bush administration have been critiqued from many directions, Rahko’s analysis demonstrates the role played by fundamental assumptions about the place of rhetoric in policy formation.

Wonjun Chung and Taejun David Lee approach the economic crisis from a different perspective, providing a content analysis of financial services advertising in the U.S. spanning a five-year period beginning before the onset of the crisis and ending when the crisis was well-established. They note a significant change in not only the number of ads placed by the institutions in their sample, but also a change in the types of appeals presented by those ads. As the economy transitioned from boom to bust, “transformational” ads emphasizing consumer identity or uses of financial products were used less frequently, with a corresponding increase in the use of “informational” ads that focused on the characteristics of the products themselves. Their essay provides a more fine-grained analysis of those broad strategies, suggesting implications for crisis communication, organizational ethics, and adaptive public relations.

This special issue would not have been possible without the help of those who volunteered to review manuscripts and provided valuable advice and recommendations. Patrice Buzzanel, George Cheney, Francois Cooren, Marya Doerfel, Alison Henderson, Jeff Kassing, Tim Kuhn, Ed Mabry, Steve May, Dennis Mumby, Karen Myers, Linda Putnam, Amy Struthers, Cynthia Stohl, and Paige Turner all volunteered; although assignments were made according to topic and not all were called upon to review, we greatly appreciate the support shown by these scholars.

A tale of two streets:
(Re)presenting economic value during the creation and passage of the Emergency
Economic Stabilization Act

Joshua S. Hanan
Temple University
Philadelpha, PA, USA

Abstract. This essay analyzes a number of public
discourses pertaining to “Wall Street” and “Main Street” during the creation
and passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. By operating
as metonyms, the “Streets” provided formal identities for many of the variables
at play in the emerging crisis. Far from existing within a discursive vacuum,
however, the rhetoric of the Streets is shown to be mediated by a number of
institutional and technological constraints. As a consequence, the economic
rhetoric examined in this essay is better understood as an act of articulation
rather than as a constitutive process that produces economic reality.

Negotiating economic judgment in late modernity:
Knowledge, action, and the global financial crisis

Stephen
E. Rahko
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN, USA

Abstract. The turmoil and social controversy that still linger in the
aftermath of the 2008 bailout of Wall Street illustrate the importance of the
“economic” to American political culture. Through an analysis of competing
rationales struggling to define both the causes and appropriate remedies to
manage the economic crisis, this paper identifies and theorizes a particular
register of judgment, economic judgment, prevailing in American political
culture. This paper argues that economic judgment, largely modernist in its
current configuration, requires a prudential sensibility that can expand the
scope of both who may deliberate and what can be deliberated with regard to
economic topics. Such an expansion would enable an enlargement of more
possibilities for action in economic matters through the broader consideration
of multiple perspectives and knowledges, an enlargement that is necessary for
late-modern times.

What have we learned from the current economic crisis?
Strategic communication responses of financial service organizations

Wonjun Chung
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Lafayette, LA, USA

and

Taejun (David) Lee
Bradley University
Peoria, IL, USA

Abstract. This study investigates how the U.S. financial services organizations provided financial information and strategically used various message and creative strategies in their advertising during the current economic crisis. A content analysis was used to examine a total of 4,111 financial services advertisements in eight national print magazines within a five year period spanning the onset of the crisis (2005 to 2009). This study showed three significant findings; 1) there was a significant decline in the total number of yearly advertisements during the financial crisis; 2) the economic crisis led to an increase in the use of informational message strategies over the transformational strategies that were used more frequently earlier; and 3) there were differences in the use of the financial message and creative strategies during the five years.

Auditory and textual conversational multitasking

Eli Dresner and Segev Barak
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel

Abstract. Conversational multitasking — the participation in several concomitant linguistic interactions — is becoming ever more prevalent, both in purely textual contexts on-line and in hybrid situations, involving both face-to-face and technologically mediated interaction. The present study examines how linguistic modality--auditory vs. textual--affects cognitive capacity for multitasking. Results show that text supports multitasking better than voice, that both the intermingling and combination of text and voice do not improve on purely textual channels, and that textual visual indications of speakers' identities do not improve auditory multitasking capacities either. In the discussion we consider the implications, applications and limitations of these results.

Imagined communities, virtual diasporas or local hangouts?
A study of Trinidad and Tobago groups on Facebook

Abstract. The present study examines the use of the ‘groups’ area of the social networking site Facebook for creation of social spaces by persons with an interest in the Caribbean republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Halavais’ (2000) ideas about the local tendencies of online interactions and Anderson’s (2005) notion of “long distance nationalisms” are tested against the scope and content of the Facebook groups examined. The present research finds support for the idea of local concerns dominating “local” spaces even though they are situated in cyberspace. While diasporic and group identity notions were present, they tended to be isolated to groups specifically defined in terms of migrant or diasporic sub communities.

The least anxious person in a boat:
Journalists perform a status degradation ceremony
as they mourn Walter Cronkite

Ronald Bishop
Drexel University
Philadelphia, PA, USA

Abstract. This narrative analysis weaves together three strands of research as a foundation for exploring the overarching narrative about journalism seen in news media coverage of the death in July 2009 of longtime CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite: 1) journalism as a catalyst for and expression of collective memory; 2) the formation by journalists of interpretive communities through which they evaluate their work and maintain a history of the field; and 3) rhetorical boundary work undertaken when members of a profession are compelled to differentiate themselves from competitors, often thanks to their own acts of misconduct. The analysis reveals that as they celebrated Cronkite’s storied career and impressive journalistic skills, they were subjecting him to a status degradation ceremony (Garfinkel, 1956). Across five primary narrative strands, Cronkite was treated as a relic; his doggedness and objectivity made to seem “strange” as journalists defe
nded a new boundary by highlighting the differences between Cronkite’s approach to reporting and their own. The old boundary between news and entertainment should no longer be defended, their coverage suggests, now that Cronkite, the personification of the objective reporter, has passed from the scene. Cronkite’s place in the history of journalism was not challenged, but nostalgic feelings marginalized Cronkite and suggested that today’s journalism, though imperfect, is the only game in town.

Israeli journalism blogs: The new public sphere?

Abstract. The emergence of the Internet has shifted the traditional public sphere from the physical world to the virtual one, making it easier for individuals to participate in public discussion and be vital contributors to the new public sphere. One of the emerging popular online platforms for public discussion is the blog, which unlike official media outlets, enables individuals to share their thoughts without state or commercial regulation. As the current political climate is one in which public debate is increasingly restricted and the scope for open discussion is limited by many restraints upon journalism, some professional journalists are turning to such blogs, in addition to traditional forms of journalism, as an alternative platform to express their views, free of such restraints. In light of this trend, this study focuses on Israeli journalist bloggers and the extent to which they are shaping and constructing a new Israeli public sphere.

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